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Maybe you’re one of them. Maybe, even as I sit here typing this, you are seething with rage. “18 hours and it ends with Cooper trapped in yet another fucked up situation, with Laura Palmer still screaming!? What the Hell!?”

Well, my advice would be to calm down. Did Twin Peaks: The Return ends on a conventional note? No. Has anything about Twin Peaks: The Return been conventional? Hell no. This is a David Lynch production, after all. And Lynch has never shown an interest in tidy endings. In fact, if anything, Lynch has never shown much of an interest in endings. Blue Velvet concluded with a fake bird. Lost Highway ended with Bill Pullman appearing to transform yet again. Even Mulholland Drive ended with that evil creature still living behind Winkie’s.

As far as I’m concerned, Twin Peaks: The Return provided 18 of the most intriguing hours in television history. Am I little bit frustrated that it didn’t end on a definite note of conclusion? Sure. (With 15 minutes left in Part 18, I found myself saying, “Uhmmm … what about Audrey?”) But I’ll tell you right, I’m going to have a lot of fun debating what it all meant. Art is not about easy solutions.

(For the record, next weekend, I’m going to binge watch all 18 hours and then maybe I’ll post my conclusions.)

It could be argued that this should not be called a conclusion. As Ryan pointed out in this week’s peaks, the story continues. There may or may not be another season on Showtime. There may or may not be another Twin Peaks movie. Hell, Mark Frost may or may not write another Twin Peaks book. And, if none of that happens, the story will continue in our imaginations.

I went back and forth on whether or not to review both Parts 17 and 18 together or separately. In the end, I decided to review them separately because I consider Part 17 to be the conclusion on the third season of Twin Peaks while Part 18 feels like it’s laying the groundwork for a fourth season.

Let’s get to it!

Things open in South Dakota, with Gordon Cole (David Lynch) lamenting to Albert (Miguel Ferrer) and Tammy (Chrysta Bell) that he couldn’t bring himself to shoot Diane. After Albert says that Cole is going soft, Cole replies, “Not where it counts, buddy.” That line made me laugh, despite myself. Lynch just has such a sincere way of delivering his lines.

Cole goes on to explain that, before his death, Major Briggs shared, with him and Cooper, his discovery of an extremely evil and negative force that, “in olden times,” was known as Jowday. Jowday eventually got shortened to Judy. Briggs, Cooper, and Cole put together a plan that could lead them to Judy. Apparently, before his disappearance, Philip Jeffries said that he was on the verge of discovering Judy. Cole theorizes that the Doppelganger is looking for Judy.

Suddenly, the phone rings. It’s Agent Headley (Jay R. Ferguson), calling from Las Vegas, to announce that they’ve found Dougie Jones but that Dougie disappeared again. Mullins (Don Murray) asks to speak to Cole and gives him a message from Cooper. Cooper is on his way to Twin Peaks, to see Sheriff Truman!

In the Twin Peaks Sheriff’s Department, the lock-up is still nosiy. The drunk (Jay Aaseng) and Deputy Chad (John Pirruccello) take turns taunting each other. Eyeless Naido (Nae Yuuki) continues to whimper. Freddie (Jake Wardle) and James (James Marshall) listen.

At the Great Northern, Ben (Richard Beymer) gets a call. Jerry’s turned up in Wyoming, apparently convinced that he can kill people with his binoculars. It might be time to say, “No more drugs for that man,” as far as Jerry is concerned.

The next morning, the Doppelganger (Kyle MacLachlan) wanders through the woods outside of Twin Peaks. The vortex opens above him. The Doppelganger vanishes.

In the building above the purple sea, the disembodied head of Major Briggs (Don S. Davis) floats between two pictures, one of the woods and one of the Palmer House. The Fireman (Carel Struycken) waves his hand. In the background, we hear the electrical hum that been haunting the Great Northern.

The Doppelganger materializes outside of the Twin Peaks sheriff’s station. As he walks towards it, he is seen by Deputy Andy (Harry Goaz). At first, I was worried that the Doppelganger was going to kill Deputy Andy but instead, he greets him with a cold, “Hello, Andy.”

Andy leads the Doppelganger into the station, where they meet Lucy (Kimmy Robertson) and Sheriff Truman (Robert Forster). When the Doppelganger turns down a cup of coffee, everyone knows something strange is happening. Then, Andy starts to have visions of him and Lucy standing in the lobby, looking at something.

Meanwhile, in the holding area, it turns out that Chad has got a key hidden in his shoe. He gets out of his cell and heads for the weapons locker. When Andy shows up, looking for Hawk, Chad comes at him with a raised gun. But fear not! Freddie Sykes uses his green glove of power to throw open the door his cell, smashing Chad in the face and knocking him out.

Meanwhile, Lucy informs Truman that he has a phone call and he really needs to take it. Reluctantly, Truman takes the call and finds himself talking to … DALE COOPER! Dale and the Mitchums have just entered the Twin Peaks city limits and are on their way to the station!

The Doppelganger, realizing what is happening, reaches inside his jacket for a gun when suddenly — bang! The Doppelganger crashes to the floor. Standing behind him, holding a gun, is Lucy!

(Making this scene especially satisfying is that, during the second season Twin Peaks, Lucy was exclusively given comedic subplots that had nothing to do with the main storyline. 25 years, she finally gets to save the day.)

Way to go, Lucy!

Cooper tells Truman to make sure that no one touches the Doppelganger’s body until he arrives. Andy steps into the office with Hawk, Naido, James, and Freddie. Suddenly, just as in Part 8, the woodsmen appear and start working on the Doppelganger’s body. While that happens, Cooper and the Mitchums show up. And then Cole, Albert, and Tammy show up. It’s getting crowded in that office!

Suddenly, the spirit of Killer BOB (represented by an orb that contains stock footage of Frank Silva) emerges from the Doppelganger’s body and lunges at Freddie. Despite getting bloodied in the process, Freddie is able to use his green glove of power to smash BOB’s face into a thousand pieces. Yay Freddie!

Cooper puts the ring on the Doppelganger’s finger. The Doppelganger vanishes. Yay Cooper!

Cooper gets the key to his former hotel room from Sheriff Truman. “Major Briggs told me Sheriff Truman would have it,” Cooper explains. (Yay Major Briggs!)

Now, what happens next is interesting. A lot of positive things happen. Bobby Briggs (Dana Asbrook) comes in the office and Cooper tells him that he and Major Briggs are proud of him. Blind Naido is revealed to actually be the real Diane, in disguise. (And yes, the real Diane still has eyes.) Cole and Albert are reunited with their friend. And yet, through the whole scene, we see the face of another Cooper, this one with a blank expression, superimposed over the action.

This was when I started to suspect that the finale might turn out to be a bit controversial. Are we seeing reality or are we watching a dream, a memory, or a wish? Not even the presence of the Mitchum girls in pink, passing out finger sandwiches, can change the ominous tone of all this otherwise positive scene.

Cooper glances at the clock in Truman’s office and sees that the minute hand seems to be stuck.

A distorted voice says, “We live inside a dream.”

Oh shit, I thought as I watched this scene, we’ve got 30 minutes left and things are about to get so seriously fucked up…

Suddenly, Cooper, Diane, and Cole are slowly walking down a dark hallway. I believe they’re in the Great Northern because, when they reach a door, Cooper uses his old hotel room key to open it. He tells Cole and Diane to wait behind and then he enters the room. “See you at the curtain call,” Cooper says.

Inside the room is MIKE (Al Strobel) who recites the Fire Walk With Me poem. MIKE leads Cooper up a staircase and into the room the holds the metal device the contains the spirit of Philip Jeffries. Cooper asks to be sent back to February 23rd, 1989, the night of the death of Laura Palmer.

“Cooper,” Jeffries says, “remember…”

“ELECTRICITY!” MIKE exclaims.

Suddenly, Cooper’s back in 1989. He’s watching Laura (Sheryl Lee) sneak out of her house and jump on the back of James Hurley’s motorcycle while a jealous Leland (Ray Wise) watches from his window. Cooper watches them in the woods, listening as Laura tells James that Bobby killed a man. (This is true. Before he became everyone’s favorite lawman, Bobby shot a Canadian drug runner in Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me. I always wondered if that would be acknowledged.)

Cooper watches the familiar scene play out but, when Laura jumps off of James’s motorcycle, Cooper steps forward and changes history. Instead of allowing Laura to walk off to be murdered, Cooper tells her that he is taking her home. “I saw you in my dreams,” Laura says.

The next morning, we see another familiar sight: Laura’s body on the shore, wrapped in plastic. The body disappears. In archived footage from the original Twin Peaks pilot, we watch as Pete Martell (Jack Nance) says good morning to Catherine (Piper Laurie) and then heads out to fish. Except, this time, there’s no body to distract him. Instead of calling the police and reporting a murder, Pete goes fishing.

(It’s a sweet image and it was nice to see that, despite having been dead for 21 years, Jack Nance, who starred in Eraserhead and was the former husband of Catherine “Log Lady” Coulson, still appeared in the revival. Part 17 was dedicated to his memory.)

Where is Laura? Despite not being dead, she’s not in her house. However, Sarah Palmer (Grace Zabriskie) is. Sarah is smashing the famous picture of Laura as homecoming queen into little pieces. Disturbingly, this would seem to indicate that, at the time that Laura was being abused and eventually murdered by her father, Sarah was not a bystander but was instead possessed by the same evil that possessed Leland.

Cooper leads Laura through the woods. Suddenly, Laura screams and is gone.

Standing in front the red curtains of the Black Lodge, Julee Cruise sings.

End credits.

On to Part 18, which I am about to rewatch after which I will write up a review. It might be a few hours. Until then, why not check out some of the other 81 Twin Peaks-related posts that we’ve published this year at the Shattered Lens!

Obviously, I’m running behind this week. Usually, I post my recap of the latest episode of Twin Peaks: The Return within a few hours of the episode’s premiere. This week, I’m a day behind and I apologize. I could give you all sorts of excuses as to why I’m running behind but I won’t waste your time with that. Instead, I’ll simply quote Laura Dern from Blue Velvet: “It’s a strange world, isn’t it?”

Part 14 opens with Gordon Cole (David Lynch) in South Dakota, calling Sheriff Truman (Robert Forster) in Twin Peaks. While I know some people are frustrated with any episode that doesn’t open with Kyle MacLachlan either staring blankly at Janey-E or killing someone, I have to say that I always feel somewhat comforted when Gordon shows up. Some of that is because Gordon is a lot how I imagine David Lynch to be in real life, right down to the corny jokes and the earnest encouragement. However, there’s also the fact that Lynch has grown tremendously as an actor. If you watch the original Twin Peaks, Cole comes across as largely being a one-joke character. Sometimes it’s funny and sometimes, it’s not. However, in the revival, Gordon has emerged as one of the most compelling characters around.

Anyway, Truman lets Gordon know about the pages from Laura’s diary that were found earlier and mentions that the pages indicate that there are “two Coopers.” Gordon thanks him for the information and wishes all the best to both of the Truman brothers.

Meanwhile, Albert (Miguel Ferrer) tells Tammy (Chrysta Bell) about the very first blue rose case. It involved a murder in Washington, the death of a woman named Lois Duffy. Lois’s murder was witnessed by Cole and Philip Jeffries. As Albert tells it, Lois mentioned “blue roses” as she died. Her body then vanished. A woman, who looked exactly like Lois Duffy and who claimed to be Lois Duffy, was arrested for the murder but later hung herself in her cell. Tammy figures out that blue roses are not natural, they do not occur in nature. The dying woman was not a natural thing.

Cole steps into the room, announcing that he’s “got it.” After Cole spends a while flinching at the sound of a particularly aggressive window washer doing his job, they are joined by Diane (Laura Dern). Diane lights a cigarette and tells everyone to fuck off. Typical Diane.

Cole asks Diane about the last time she saw Cooper and whether he mentioned Major Briggs. Diane replies that she doesn’t want to talk about that night but she does eventually say that Cooper did mention Briggs. Albert tells her about Briggs’s death in the fire and the subsequent discovery of her headless body in South Dakota. He also mentions that a ring was found in Briggs stomach, a ring with an inscription that indicates that it was a gift to Dougie from Janey-E. A shocked Diane says that Janey-E is her estranged half-sister.

OH MY GOD!!!!!

Gordon calls the Las Vegas FBI office and tells Special Agent Headley (Jay R. Ferguson) that he wants Douglas Jones and Janey-E to be picked up on suspicion of having been involved with a double murder. Headley is quite enthusiastic about tracking Dougie down. As he yells at a subordinate, “THIS IS WHAT WE DO IN THE FBI!”

Back in South Dakota, Diane leaves the room. Cole tells Albert and Tammy about Sheriff Truman and the Two Coopers.

In the dream, Gordon was in Paris on a case. He met with Monica Bellucci (who plays herself) at a cafe. Cole says that Cooper was at the cafe but he couldn’t see his face. Monica, Cole, and Monica’s friends had coffee. Monica said, “We’re like the dreamer who dreams and then lives inside the dream….but, who is the dreamer?”

In the dream, Monica told Cole to look over his shoulder. Cole did so and he saw a younger version of himself. Cole watched as the younger version of himself talked to Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan) about a dream that Cooper had. Suddenly, Phillip Jeffries (David Bowie, seen in archive footage from Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me) entered the office and pointed at Cooper.

“Who do you think that is!?” Jeffries said.

Back in the present, Cole says, “This has given me a lot to think about.”

(This entire sequence — from Cole calling Truman to Albert and Tammy talking to Cole’s dream — is absolutely brilliant and among the best work that Lynch has ever done as a director and an actor.)

Meanwhile, at the Twin Peaks Sheriff’s Department, Andy (Harry Goaz), Hawk (Michael Horse), and Boddy (Dana Ashbrook) are getting ready to go hiking to the place where Major Briggs used to take Bobby as a boy. But first, they arrest everyone’s least favorite corrupt asshole, Deputy Chad (John Pirruccello).

In the woods, while a faint electrical hum is heard in the background, Truman, Andy, Hawk, and Bobby make their way to the location that they were given in Briggs’s note. They find Naido (Nae Yuuki), a naked woman with no eyes, lying at the base of a tree. As Andy, the most kind-hearted of the group, rushes over to the help her, a vortex appears in the sky above him.

Suddenly, Andy’s siting in the same black-and-white room where this season began. Across from him is the Giant (Carel Struycken).

“I am the Fireman,” the Giant says.

Andy has visions of … well, of the series so far. He sees the dark figures at the gas station. He sees the Woodsman demanding, “Gotta light?” He sees Laura Palmer, with angels on either side of her. He sees Cooper and the Doppelganger. He sees himself leading Lucy into the lobby of the sheriff’s department. He sees electrical pole #6, the same pole in front of which Richard Horne ran over that little boy.

Suddenly, Andy is back in the woods. He is carrying Naido and he seems very confident of what needs to be done. “We have to get her off the mountain,” Andy says, “She is very important. There are people who want her dead. She’s fine physically. If we put her in a cell, she’ll be safe. Don’t tell anybody about this.”

(Of course, no one mentions that Naido doesn’t have any eyes.)

Back at the sheriff’s department, Lucy gives Naido some old pajamas and says she hopes they’re okay. Naido remains silent as Andy locks her up in a cell. After Andy and Lucy leave, a drunk in another cell starts to make monkey noises while the recently incarcerated Chad yells at him to shut up. Suddenly, Naido starts to softly murmur in her cell.

“It’s a fucking nuthouse!” Chad says.

“Fucking nuthouse,” the drunk replies, repeating Chad’s words in a way that reminded me of the way Dougie communicates with people in Vegas.

As Chad lies down in his cell, we see that the drunk is bleeding and a pool of blood is forming at his feet.

At the Great Northern, security guard James Hurley (James Marshall) is talking to another guard, Freddie Sykes (Jake Wardle). Freddie is originally from the UK and always wears a glove over his left hand. It’s James birthday and all he wants is for Freddie to explain why he always wears the glove.

Freddie explains that he can’t take the glove off. He tried once and his hand started bleeding. Freddie explains that one night, in London, he was sucked up into a vortex. A giant called The Fireman told him to go to a hardware store, find an open package of gloves, and put on only one glove. The glove gives Freddie super strength, which he discovered when he broke the neck of a man trying to prevent him from taking the glove. It was only after apparently killing this man that Freddie remembered that the Giant also told him to move to Twin Peaks, Washington. “There,” Freddie says the Giant told him, “you’ll find your destiny.”

James thanks Freddie for the story and then goes to check on the hotel’s furnace. As he does so, he hears an electrical hum, much like the one that was previously heard in Ben Horne’s office.

Meanwhile, Sarah Palmer (Grace Zabriskie) walks up to a sleazy bar. As she approaches, we hear the same electrical sound that we previously heard while Truman and the deputies were walking through the woods. Inside the bar, Sarah is harassed by a drunk who just won’t take no for an answer. So, Sarah opens her face, revealing the darkness underneath the human surface.

“Do you really want to fuck with this?” she asks, before closing her face and then biting the man’s neck and ripping out his throat…

That said, I don’t blame Sarah. That guy was a jerk. We’ve all been there.

At the Roadhouse, two women — Megan (Shane Lynch) and Sophie (Emily Stofle) — talk about getting high, stealing, avoiding the nut house, and a missing acquaintance named Billy. Megan says that, when she last saw Billy, he was storming in and out of her kitchen, with blood coming from his nose. It is also revealed that Megan’s mom is named Tina. If all these names sound familiar, it’s because we already know that Audrey Horne has been 1) having an affair with Billy and 2) has a friend named Tina.

And so concludes a very intriguing episode of Twin Peaks: The Return.

To recap: Janey-E is Diane’s half-sister. The Fireman is sending people to Twin Peaks. And Billy and Tina actually do exist and aren’t just figments of Audrey’s imagination.

With only 4 episodes left, who knows where all of this is going to lead…

Tonight’s episode of Twin Peaks was … well, I’m not sure how to describe it. Basically, if you combined Tree of Lifeand Kiss Me Deadly with The Beast of Yucca Flatsand Tombs of the Blind Dead, you would end up with something resembling tonight’s episode. Tonight’s episode was David Lynch at both his most brilliant and his most cheerfully defiant. Tonight was David Lynch unleashed. People either hated it or they loved it.

The recapper over at E! News Online hated it. I almost didn’t include a link to their recap, largely because the only reason they’re recapping Twin Peaks is to get the clicks. They’re certainly not recapping it because they have any sort of genuine understanding or, for that matter, interest in what Lynch is attempting to do. For the most part, their recap went something like this: “Oh my God, that was soooo weird and the nuclear explosion sequence went on forever and what was the deal with 1956 and look at all the snarky nicknames I’ve come up with for all the characters and oh my God, did I mention that I have a roommate?” If your main complaint about tonight’s episode is that it was “too weird,” then you obviously are not meant to be a part of this show’s audience.

As for the length of the nuclear explosion … seriously? What the Hell type of complaint is that? You might as well complain that the stargate sequence went on for too long in 2001 or maybe that Picasso shouldn’t have taken up so much space with Guernica. It’s easy to imagine this critic in Elizabethan England, whining that Hamlet was just too talky. Tonight, we were lucky enough to witness one of the most visually stunning sequences in the history of television and you actually have the freaking nerve to complain that it went on for too long? I understand that, over at the Kardashian network, being snarky is a part of the job but you can be snarky without being stupid about it.

I was not the only one disappointed by that recap…

(I usually try to cut recappers some slack. After all, you’re on a deadline and you’re trying to beat everyone else for those clicks and sometimes, you rush and you say something stupid. I’ve been there. Just ask Arleigh about the first season Game of Thrones recap where I somehow managed to mix up Jon Snow and Robb Stark. That was beyond embarrassing. But, again, there’s a difference between being rushed and being willfully ignorant about what you’ve just watched. For instance, there’s a reason why I wouldn’t even try to recap that football show starring Dwayne Johnson. I guess my point is that maybe E! should focus on what they’re good at, like promoting scripted reality programs and helping Scott Disick get laid.)

Anyway, here’s my attempt to recap what I watched. I will warn you right now that a mere recap is not going to do this episode justice. If you haven’t seen it, you need to watch it before reading any recap, regardless of who wrote it. Tonight, I saw images that I never expected to ever see on television. There were visuals of such unexpected beauty and haunting menace that you simply must see them for yourself.

We open with a classic David Lynch driving scene. Doppelganger Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan) and Ray (George Griffith) are driving down a country road in the middle of the night. The Warden attempted to put tracking devices on the car but Doppelganger Cooper was far too clever for him.

Ray apologizes for running off on Doppelganger Cooper and asks where Darya is. The Doppelganger says that she’s waiting for their phone call. (If you’ve seen the pilot episode, you know that she was murdered by the Doppelganger.) The Doppelganger says that Ray has something that he wants. Ray assures him that he does and that he all the “numbers memorized.” However, Ray thinks that it might be worth some money if the Doppelganger really wants what he has.

Doppelganger Cooper tells Ray that they’re going to a place called The Farm but Ray asks if they can pull over for a sec so he can, as he so charmingly puts it, “take a leak.”

“Go for it,” Doppelganger Cooper replies.

Well, not surprisingly, Ray has another reason for wanting to pull over. As soon as Doppelganger Cooper gets out of the car and demands the information, Ray shoots him.

“Tricked ya, fucker,” Ray says.

And that’s when things start to get … strange.

Suddenly, there is a flashing light and, as Ray watches, a group of dark men (much like the dark men who previously appeared in the South Dakota jail and outside the morgue) emerge from the woods. They surround the doppelganger. While some dance in a circle, others paw at the the body. Briefly, it appears as if Cooper’s chest has been opened and the smiling face of Killer BOB (Frank Silva) can be seen. Ray runs back to his car and speeds off while the dark men vanish.

As he drives away, Ray calls Phillip Jeffries and tells him that Cooper might be dead but he’s not 100% sure.

Meanwhile, at the Roadhouse, Nine Inch Nails performs. The recapper at E! felt that the Nine Inch Nails performance went on for too long, which again shows a remarkable ignorance about the importance of music in David Lynch’s work. (Considering how much Twin Peaks: The Return has in common with Lost Highway, the sudden appearance of Nine Inch Nails felt totally appropriate.)

As the song comes to an end, we cut back to the Doppelganger, who suddenly sits up. Has he come back to life or did those two gunshots really fail to kill him the first time? And what’s happening with Dougie/Cooper? It’s been suggested that the only way for Cooper to be Cooper again is for the Doppelganger to die and return to the Black Lodge. If the Doppelganger was dead for even a moment, does that mean Dougie/Cooper had a moment of clarity?

Those are all good questions that were not answered tonight because Lynch suddenly cuts from the Doppelganger to July 16th, 1945. Suddenly, we are in White Sands, New Mexico, listening as a voice counts down to zero. We watch from above as the world’s first atomic bomb is detonated. A mushroom cloud slowly and, it must be said, beautifully rises up into the sky.

The viewer plunges into the mushroom cloud and what follows is a mix of sound and image that so beautiful and so menacing that it is almost indescribable. We are surrounded by flames and explosions as we plunge into the heart of man-made destruction. In many ways, it reminded me of the Big Bang sequence of Terence Malick’s Tree of Life but, whereas Malick was imagining creation, Lynch is imagining destruction.

We find ourselves now looking at what appears to be a gas station in the middle of nowhere. Spurts of static are heard on the soundtrack while lights flash and shadowy men appear (and disappear) inside and outside of the station.

A figure floats in a gray space, apparently spitting up eggs. One of the eggs floats by us and, again, the face of Killer BOB is seen.

More flames. More explosions. A golden egg floats towards the camera. Briefly, we hear a heartbeat.

Cut to: the purple ocean that Cooper saw when he first escaped from the Black Lodge.

A woman who, in the end credits, is identified as being Senorita Dido (Joy Nash) sits in a gray drawing room. We hear an electronic clanking and a light starts to flash. The Giant (Carel Struycken) enters the room and turns off the alarm.

Moving slowly, the Giant walks up a flight of stairs. He walks into a theater, one that looks much like the Silencio theater from Mulholland Drive. On a screen, he watches the nuclear explosion. When he sees the egg with BOB’s face, the Giant suddenly starts to float into the air.

Senorita Dido enters the theater and watches as a golden cloud appears over the Giant’s head. From the cloud descends a golden egg, which Dido catches. In the egg, she sees the face of Laura Palmer. Dido kisses the egg and then releases it into the air. It’s sucked into a tube.

Dido stares at the screen, watching as the golden egg descends on Earth.

We cut to 1956. The New Mexico desert. (The rest of the episode is in black-and-white, giving these scenes a Beast of Yucca Flats feel. You can easily imagine Tor Johnson wandering about.) Another egg — this one much smaller, sits on the barren ground. It hatches and winged bug crawls out. (It looked like a mutated cockroach to me.)

Cut to the gas station, where a teenage couple is talking. (Coincidentally or not, they resemble James and Donna from the original series.) The girl (Tikaeni Faircrest) gets excited when she finds a penny on the ground. Well, who wouldn’t? Later, the boy (Xolo Mariduena) asks the girl for just one kiss. I’m not sure who they are or why they’re here but they’re both actually rather sweet.

A shadowy figure — the Woodsman (Robert Broski) — appears walking through the desert. The recapper at E! News apparently thought that the Woodsman was meant to be a “gorilla.” Of course, anyone who actually know anything about movies will immediately notice that the Woodsman looks a lot like the evil man who was living behind the dumpster in Mulholland Drive.

The monster from Mulholland Drive

The Woodsman from Twin Peaks, Part 8

The Woodsman stumbles across the highway. He approaches a couple in a car. “Got a light?” he asks, his voice deep and almost robotic. “Got a light?” he repeats, like a malfunctioning recording. The couple speeds away and we see that the Woodsman is not alone. At least two other shadowy men are with him.

A radio station, KPJK, sits in the middle of the desert. The Woodsman approaches.

We see that everyone in the nearby town — from an auto mechanic to a waitress to the teenage girl who found the penny — is listening to the station.

The woodsman enters the station. “Got a light?” he asks, before crushing the receptionist’s head with his gloved hand. He does the same thing to the station’s disc jockey but not before the Woodsman gets on the air and says, “This is the water and this is the well. Drink full and descend. The horse is the white of the eyes and dark within.”

As everyone in town listens to the Woodsman’s voice, they pass out. While the girl lies unconscious, the bug crawls into her mouth.

Having delivered his message and killed everyone at the station, the Woodsman walks into the night. The sound of a horse whinnying is heard.

And that’s it!

What does it all mean? I don’t know. What I do know is that I’ve never seen anything like it before. This was experimental cinema at its best. (And make no mistake. Twin Peaks is not a TV series as much as it’s an 18-hour movie.) Was it for everyone? No. Then again, nothing worthwhile ever is. David Lynch once described his first feature film, Eraserhead, as being a “dream of dark and disturbing things.” I can think of no better description for Part 8 of Twin Peaks.

The saga continues in two weeks! Will we still be in 1956? Will Dougie/Cooper ever snap back to normal? Will James Hurley ever show up again? Who knows!? But I will say this: I can’t wait to find out.

As I sit here working on my recap of the first two episodes of Showtime’s revival of Twin Peaks, it’s occurring to me that this is not going to be an easy job. Last month, when Leonard, Jeff, and I were reviewing the show’s first two seasons, we had the advantage of knowing where the story was leading. We knew what would be important and what was a red herring.

With this revival, we no longer have that luxury. I have no idea where this show is going. All I know, for sure, is that David Lynch has given us 18 hours of new material. It’s not necessarily going to be easy to review the revival. I can already tell that. From what I’ve heard and read, it appears that Lynch approached this less as a TV series and more as an 18-hour movie. I’ve already noticed that several reviewers are already overplaying the “Twin Peaks is weird” angle. David Lynch may be a surrealist but there is always a definite logic to all of his work. You just have to have the patience to find it and I imagine that’ll be the case with Twin Peaks: The Return as well.

I’ve already shared my initial thoughts on the first two episodes and Ryan The TrashFilm Guru has posted a review of his own. What follows below is a more in-depth recap of what we saw last night. Needless to say, if you haven’t seen the first two episodes of the revival yet, this entire post is one huge spoiler. So, read it at your own risk!

Okay — ready?

Let’s go!

We start where we left, with a clip from 27 years ago. In the Black Lodge, Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee) tells Dale Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan) that she will see him in 25 years.

Cut to Twin Peaks, the town that we all know and love. The trees are still shrouded in fog. The high school hallways are empty. Laura Palmer’s homecoming queen picture still sits in the trophy case. The title appears. Angelo Badalamenti’s haunting theme music starts to play. We see the waterfall. We read the opening credits. Twin Peaks is back.

In the Black Lodge, a much older Giant (Carel Struycken) talks to an aged Cooper. The inhabitants of the Lodge still speak backwards and we are still provided with subtitles so that we can follow what they’re saying. Cooper still speaks in his normal voice, indicating that he may be trapped in the Lodge but he has yet to truly become a part of it. The Giant tells Cooper to listen to the sounds and looks over at an old-fashioned phonograph. “It is in our house now,” the Giant says. “Remember Four Three Zero. Richard and Linda. Two birds with one stone.”

“I understand,” Cooper says. (I’m glad someone does.)

Cut to a trailer sitting in the middle of nowhere. A pickup truck drives up. The truck has two cardboard boxes in the bed. Dr. Jacoby (Russ Tamblyn) comes out of the trailer and gets the boxes. What’s inside the boxes? Shovels, of course! Jacoby certainly does seem to be happy to have them. Maybe he’s still looking for that necklace that Donna and James buried 25 years ago…

Cut to New York City. Sam Colby (Ben Rosenfield) has a new job. He sits on a couch in a room and he watches a black box that is sitting inside of a glass box. His job is to see if anything happens in the box and to make sure that there is always a camera filming the box. There’s a guard posted outside of the room. Sam’s friend, Tracey (Madeline Zima), is allowed to bring him coffee but she’s not allowed to enter the room or see the boxes. The sight of Sam sitting in that room, staring at that box, reminded me of the scenes with Michael Anderson as the man who controlled Hollywood in Mulholland Drive. As creepy as that box may have been, it was the stillness of this scene that made me nervous. Sam seemed remarkably uninterested in why exactly he had to watch the box and that lack of curiosity struck me as odd and just a little depressing.

Cut to … oh my God, we’re back at the Great Northern! And there’s Ben Horne (Richard Beymer)! He’s in his office and he’s leering at his new secretary, Barbara (Ashley Judd). It’s just like old times and, of course, it’s nice to see that Ben survived striking his head on the fireplace mantle 25 years ago. That said, Ben appears to have given up on being a do-gooder. He’s back to obsessing over money. Jerry (David Patrick Kelly) drops by for a visit and reveals that, since Washington legalized marijuana, he’s made a fortune. Way to go, Jerry!

Cut to the Sheriff’s Department and there’s Lucy (Kimmy Robertson)! An insurance salesman comes in and asks to see Sheriff Truman. Lucy asks him if he wants to see the Sheriff Truman who is sick or the Sheriff Truman who is out of the office. Neither one is available.

Cut to a country road. Someone is driving down the street while listening to evil music. The driver is none other than … Agent Cooper? Well, it kind of looks like Agent Cooper but it’s not Cooper. For one thing, this guy has long, greasy hair and doesn’t wear a dark suit. He also doesn’t smile. He has cold, dead eyes. For another thing, he parks next to a shack and beats up a redneck, which is not exactly Agent Cooper behavior. Then he goes inside, where he meets Buelah and Otis. He tells them that he has come to pick up Ray (George Griffith) and Darya (Nicole LaLiberte). I don’t remember Agent Cooper having such an affinity for white trash…

Oh wait! That’s not Agent Cooper! That must be Cooper’s Doppelganger!

Meanwhile, back in New York, Tracey shows up with more coffee. She and Sam are shocked to discover that the guard has left his post. This means that Tracey can now go into the room and see the mysterious box for herself! It also means that she and Sam can have some fun on the couch. While they do, Sam suddenly sees that the inside of the glass box has turned black. Suddenly, what appears to be a demonic creature appears in the box. It springs through the glass and, in a scene that leaves no doubt that this is Showtime Twin Peaks and not ABC Twin Peaks, it literally rips Sam and Tracey into pieces.

Along with giving me a good fright, this scene made me sad because I thought Sam and Tracey were a cute couple. The reviewer at TVLine complained about Sam and Tracey and the actors playing them and I really have to wonder what show he watched because, to me, both Ben Rosenfield and Madeline Zima were likable and sympathetic in their brief time on screen. Then again, the TVLine recapper also managed to confuse Bobby Briggs and James Hurley so we know he’s not a true Twin Peaks fan.

I should also mention that this scene, with hints of the demons flickering in the darkness before the sudden attack, reminded me of the infamous “there’s an evil man behind the dumpster” scene from Mulholland Drive.

Cut to Buckhorn, South Dakota. We’re confronted with a very Lynchian image. A fat woman walks a tiny dog down the hallway of an apartment building. She stops when she smells a terrible stench coming from the neighbor’s apartment. She calls the police, worried that her neighbor Ruth Davenport may be dead.

The police arrive and it takes them forever to find a key to open up the apartment. This is one of those sequences that Lynch loves, the sequence were a simple task is made progressively more and more difficult by awkward minutia. The neighbor doesn’t know if there’s a manager available but then remembers that the manager’s been committed to an asylum. However, the manager’s brother might have the key. But she doesn’t know where the brother is but the brother’s friend, Hank Filmore (Max Perlich), might know. Hank does know but he refuses to tell and then the neighbor suddenly mentions that she has an extra key to the apartment. When the police finally get inside the apartment, they discover the naked remains of Ruth Davenport in bed. Her eyes have been removed and her head has been disconnected from her body.

Continuing the Mulholland Drive comparison, the discovery of Ruth’s body was shot in much the same way as the discovery of Diane Selwyn’s body in Mulholland Drive. As well, Brent Briscoe played a detective in Mulholland Drive and he plays one in Twin Peaks as well, leading the investigation into Ruth’s murder.

Cut back to Twin Peaks. The Log Lady (Catherine Coulson) calls Deputy Hawk (Michael Horse), who is now Deputy Chief Hawk and who is in charge while Sheriff Truman is gone. The Log Lady tells Hawk that her log has a message. “Something is different and you have to find it,” she tells him. “It has to do with Federal Agent Dale Cooper and with your heritage. This is the message of the log.”

(Coulson died shortly after filming her scenes here and her frailty make her scenes here unexpectedly poignant. As she talks to Hawk, it’s obvious that both of them know that this could be their last conversation.)

Back in South Dakota, Detective Dave is informed that one man’s finger prints have been found all over Ruth’s apartment. The finger prints belonged to Bill Hastings (Matthew Lillard), a respected high school principal. As his shocked wife, Phyllis (Cornelia Guest), watches, Bill is arrested and charged with murder. “But the Morgans are coming to dinner!” Phyllis shouts as Dave leads Bill away.

Back at the Twin Peaks Sheriff’s Department, Hawk, Lucy, and Andy (Harry Goaz) gather in the conference room. Hawk order them to look through all the files on the disappearance as Dale Cooper. Lucy says that Cooper disappeared 24 years ago and then mentions that her son is 24 years old. “He was born on the same day as Marlon Brando,” Lucy says.

Back in South Dakota, Dave is interrogating Bill. When Dave asks Bill if he’s ever heard of Ruth Davenport, Bill says that he only knew her in passing. He denies having ever been to Ruth’s apartment but, when he says it, he nervously glances around the room. Is Bill hiding something or is he just nervous as anyone who has been arrested — whether guilty or innocent — would be? It turns out that Bill can’t account for where he was during every minute of the previous night. Dave jots down some notes on a legal pad. That’s never good. Bill wants a lawyer. Dave says that lawyer is on the way but he also asks if there’s anything else Bill would like to add “before we get a lawyer involved.” At this point, I was yelling at the screen, “Stop talking! The police are not your friends!” Dave immediately proved my point by accusing Bill of murder and then taking him to a jail cell.

Dave and the cops then go back to the Hastings house, the time with a search warrant. While the police search his car, Bill sits in his jail cell and probably wonders why he hasn’t been allowed to see his lawyer yet.

Suddenly, Dave arrives with Phyllis. Phyllis steps into the cell and tells Bill that they’re not going to give him bail. Bill says that he was never in Ruth’s apartment but that he had a dream the night that she was killed. “Fuck you!” Phyllis sanps, “you fucking bastard!” She reveals that she knows that Bill was cheating on her with Ruth. Bill shouts back that he knows about Phyllis and someone named George. Phyllis taunts him. “You’re going down. Life in prison.”

After Phyllis leaves, Bill sits in his cell. Little does he know that, three cells down, a shadowy man is sitting on a bed. The shadow slowly fades away, becoming a wisp of smoke that eventually dissipates in the air.

Phyllis arrives home. Doppelganger Cooper is waiting for her. Phyllis smiles and asks what he’s doing there. Doppelganger Cooper replies that Phyllis did a good job duplicating human nature and then shoots her in the head.

Cut to Las Vegas, Nevada. A man in an office (Patrick Fischler, who also played the man who had a morbid — and justifiable fear — of the dumpster behind the diner in Mulholland Drive) talks to his associate Roger about a mysterious figure who “uses” him. “You better hope you never have someone like him in your life,” the man says.

Cut to a diner in South Dakota, where Doppelganger Cooper has an awkward dinner with Ray and Darya. Doppelganger Cooper tells Ray that he doesn’t “need anything.” However, he does want things. Ray kind of smirks. Doppelganger Cooper explains that what he wants is information.

Cut to Ghostwood Forest. Equipped with a flashlight, Hawk walks. He gets a call from the Log Lady. “The stars turn,” she tells hm, “and a time presents itself.” The Log Lady says she wishes she could go with Hawk but then tells him to stop by. She has coffee and pie for him. Hawks says he will, as he approaches Glastonbury Grove, which once served as the entrance into the Black Lodge.

Speaking of the Black Lodge, Cooper is still sitting in the waiting room. He has been joined by MIKE (Al Strobel), the one-armed man. “Is it the future or is it the past?” MIKE asks before saying that someone has come to see Cooper.

Enter Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee), still wearing the black dress from the last time that we saw her but definitely no longer a teenager. (Of course, this is because 25 years has passed not only on the show but in real life as well. Still, in the world of Twin Peaks, it’s interesting that time passes in The Black Lodge and people continue to age, even after they die.) Cooper and Laura recite some of the same dialogue from the dream that Cooper had during the third episode of the first season of Twin Peaks.

Suddenly, Cooper is back in the waiting room and MIKE is again asking if it is the past or the future.

MIKE leads Cooper into another room, one that is inhabited by a tree that has what appears to be a perfectly smooth brain sitting atop of it. MIKE says that the tree is his arm. The tree starts to speak to Cooper. It asks if Cooper remembers his doppelgänger. Cooper does and we get a flashback to this still powerful scene:

The tree explains that before Cooper can go out, the Doppelganger must return to the Black Lodge.

Meanwhile, in South Dakota, the Doppelganger is busy killing people. First he kills a business associate and then he returns to his motel and confronts Darya with the knowledge that someone hired her and Ray to kill him. Darya says that she doesn’t know who hired them and puts all of the blame on Ray. The Doppelganger reveals that he’s supposed to go back to the Black Lodge but he’s not planning on returning. Then, in a disturbing and deeply unpleasant scene that I personally felt went on a bit too long, the Doppelganger beats and then murders Darya.

Having killed Darya, the Doppelganger places a phone call to Philip Jeffries, the FBI agent who was played by David Bowie in Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me. They have a cryptic conversation. Philip says that the Doppelganger should be in New York and then says that the Doppelganger met with Major Garland Briggs. “How did you know that!?” the Doppelganger demands. “I just called to say goodbye,” Philip says.

The Doppelganger downloads the plans for Yankton Federal Prison and then walks down to another motel room. There he is greeted by Chantel (Jennifer Jason Leigh!). He tells Chantel that he needs her to go “clean up” the other room. Chantel is more than happy to do it.

At the Black Lodge, Cooper continues to stare at the tree. The tree says that Cooper can go but when Cooper goes out to the hallway, he finds that he still cannot pass through the curtains and back into our world. Cooper continues to walk through the Lodge until he discovers Leland Palmer (Ray Wise) sitting in a leather chair.

“Find Laura,” Leland says.

Suddenly, MIKE and the Tree appear again. MIKE says something is wrong. The tree says to find the Doppelganger. Cooper continues to walk around the lodge. (Is this all he’s been doing for the past 25 years?) He finally manages to open the curtains and finds himself watching as his Doppelganger drives down a desert road. Suddenly, the tree appears and starts lashing out at him with its limbs.

“Non-existent!” the tree snaps.

Cooper falls through the floor of the Lodge. Suddenly, he’s in the glass box in New York. And he can see Tracey and Sam having the same conversation that they had before they were killed by the weird demon creature. (Is time looping back on itself, in much the same way that it did at the end of Lost Highway with Bill Pullman telling his future self that “Dick Laurent is dead?”)

Suddenly, Cooper is falling again.

In Twin Peaks, Sarah Palmer (Grace Zabriskie) sits alone in the Palmer House, drinking, smoking, and watching one of those traumatic nature documentaries where predators eat their prey in closeup.

At the Roadhouse, the Chromatics are singing a beautifully dream-like song. Shelley (Madchen Amick) is sitting at a booth with a group of friends. She says she’s worried about her daughter, Becky. Suddenly, they see that James Hurley (James Marshall) has entered the bar and is now looking over at them.

“What’s wrong with that guy?” one of them says.

“There’s nothing wrong with that guy!” Shelley says, “He was in a motorcycle accident but he’s just quiet. He’s always been cool.”

And it’s such a sweet scene, even if it does feel a bit odd since Shelley and James didn’t even seem to know each other during the original series. I found myself wondering if Shelley is now married to Bobby Briggs. If James ends up stealing Shelley away (and that certainly seems a possibility, especially with Lara Flynn Boyle not coming back to reprise the role of Donna Hayward), this will be the second time Bobby has lost a lover to James.

(By the way, both James Marshall and Madchen Amick have aged wonderfully. If anything, James Marshall is far more handsome now than he was during the first two seasons of the show.)

There was also some excitement online when Walter Olkewicz appeared as the bartender at the roadhouse. Could it be, we all wondered, that Jacques Renault was once again alive!? Well, no. According to the credits, Olkewicz was playing Jean-Michel Renault. Apparently, he’s the fourth Renault brother.

And that’s how this perplexing episode ends. The Chromatics perform on the Roadhouse while two of our favorite characters acknowledge each other. At times, I loved this episode. At times, I was frustrated. However, I was always intrigued and this ending — this wonderfully sentimental little moment between Shelley and James — was the perfect way to cap it all off.

Do I understand everything that happened tonight? No, but it doesn’t matter. I can’t wait to see where Lynch is taking us next.

But, all good things must come to an end and, at least until the third season premieres on Showtime later this month, we have reached the end of Twin Peaks. Episode 30 brought the story to a temporary end. (The movie, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, was a prequel about the last days of Laura Palmer. It’s a haunting film and one that we’ll look at tomorrow but, at the same time, it doesn’t offer up any answers to any of the questions that the finale left hanging.)

A little history: Twin Peaks was a huge success during its first season but, during the second season, ratings plunged. According to the book, Reflections: An Oral History of Twin Peaks by Brad Dukes, neither David Lynch nor Mark Frost were as involved during the second season as they had been during the first. As compared to the genuinely unsettling first season, the second season struggled to find its voice. Was it a mystery? Was it a broad comedy? Was it a show about the paranormal or was it a soap opera? It was all of that and, for many people, that was too much. Today, of course, audiences are used to quirkiness. They’re used to shows that straddle several different genres. It’s no longer a revolutionary idea to be openly meta.

But in 1991, Twin Peaks was the show that ABC both didn’t know what to do with and, by the end, didn’t really want. It was regularly moved around the schedule and, often, weeks would pass without a new episode. Consider this: nearly two months passed between the airing of The Path to the Black Lodge and the final two episodes of the show. (Miss Twin Peaksand Beyond Life and Death were both aired on June 10th, 1991.)

For the final episode, David Lynch returned to direct and, though hardly anyone saw it when it originally aired, it’s an episode that left such an impression that — 25 years later — Showtime agree to bring the series back. The third season of Twin Peaks will premiere later this month but until then, let’s go ahead and recap Beyond Life and Death.

One last time, we open with Angelo Badalamenti’s beautiful theme music and those haunting shots of Twin Peaks.

We start at the sheriff’s station, with Lucy (Kimmy Robertson) and Andy (Harry Goaz) having a moment. Lucy talks about how scared she was when the lights went out and then says she found herself wondering what would happen if they were stuck in an elevator in the hospital and she went into labor. Andy replies that, if that happened, he would deliver the baby “in front of God and everyone.” Awwwww!

In Harry’s office, Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan) and Hawk (Michael Horse) stare at the cave drawing while Harry (Michael Ontkean) says that he has deputies in three counties looking for Windom Earle. Windom appears to have vanished. Cooper replies that the only hope they have of finding Windom and Annie is in the map.

“Fire walk with me,” Cooper says, softly, “Fire walk with me.”

Pete (Jack Nance) steps into the office and announces that the Log Lady stole his truck. I love the way that Jack Nance delivers the line, “The Log Lady stole my truck!” (Sadly, Nance was murdered just a few years after the end of Twin Peaks.) Pete says that, when last seen, the Log Lady was driving into Ghostwood Forest.

“Pete,” Cooper announces, “the Log Lady did not steal your truck. The Log Lady will be here in one minute.”

“12 rainbow trouts in the bed,” Pete says.

This triggers Harry’s memory. He announces that there is a circle of 12 sycamores in Ghostwood Forest. It’s called Glastonbury Grove. Hawk says that Glastonbury Grove is where he found the pages from Laura’s diary. Cooper suddenly says, “That’s the legendary burial place of King Arthur! Glastonbury!”

The Log Lady ignores Pete. She has a jar of oil that she hands to Cooper. The Log Lady says that her husband claimed that the oil was the opening to a gateway. Everyone agrees that it smells like scorched engine oil. Cooper has Hawk bring in Ronette Pulaski (Phoebe Augustine), who says that she smelled the oil the night that she was attacked and Laura Palmer was killed.

Out in the woods, a pickup truck comes to a stop in front of Glastonbury Grove. Inside the truck, Windom Earle (Kenneth Welsh) forces Annie (Heather Graham) to look at the 12 rainbow trout in back. Annie tells Windom that, if he’s going to kill her, to go ahead and get it over with. Windom says that there is plenty of time for that but, right now, he is enjoying the fear that he is feeling.

(After being portrayed in far too cartoonish a manner over the past few episodes, Windom is finally menacing again. For that matter, this is the first — and, as fate would have it, the only — episode where Heather Graham seems to be truly committed to her role as Annie. This episode directly challenges anyone who thinks that David Lynch is merely a visual artist who can’t direct actors.)

As Annie recites Psalm 141, Windom drags her through the woods. Windom shoves her into the the middle of the grove.

Suddenly, in the middle of the woods, the red curtains appears. Windom leads the now zombified Annie through them.

At the Hurley House, Doc Hayward (Warren Frost) is looking over the heavily bandaged Mike (Gary Hershberger) and Nadine (Wendy Robie). Meanwhile, Ed (Everett McGill) is cheerfully talking to Norma (Peggy Lipton) by the fire place. (I like the fact that, with everything that’s going on, Ed and Norma are just happy to be together.) Just as Ed and Norma start to dance, Nadine suddenly gets her memory back and starts to shout about silent drape runners. Nadine demands that Ed make everyone go away.

At the Hayward house, Eileen (Mary Jo Deschanel) sits in her wheelchair and stares at Ben Horne (Richard Beymer). Donna (Lara Flynn Boyle) comes walking down the stairs, carrying a suitcase. Eileen begs Donna not to leave but Donna starts screaming about not knowing who her parents are. Ben steps forward and apologizes. He says he only wanted to do good. He wanted to be good. He says that it felt good to finally tell the truth.

Doc Hayward arrives home and is not happy to see Ben. Ben is begging for forgiveness when, suddenly, his own wife (Jan D’Arcy) comes walking through the front door. She demands to know what Ben is trying to do to their family.

Donna looks at Doc Hayward and starts to chant, “You’re my Daddy! You’re my Daddy!” Eileen looks away, which is a polite way of saying, “No, Ben’s your Daddy and you’ve got a half-sister that everyone likes more than you.”

Ben tries to apologize again and, after 29 episodes of never losing his temper, Doc Hayward finally snaps and punches Ben. Ben falls back and hits the back of his head on the fireplace! Oh my God! Is Ben dead!? Is Doc Hayward now evil!?

(I know the answer but I’m not going to tell you until the end of this review.)

At the Martell House, Andrew (Dan O’Herlihy) is all excited because he’s figured out that the key is the key to a safety deposit box. He steals the key from the pie plate and replaces it with a duplicate. However, Pete steps into the room just in time to see Andrew doing it.

In the woods, Cooper and Harry come across the abandoned truck. They walk into the forest but Cooper suddenly announces that he must go alone. Cooper takes Harry’s flashlight and walks through the forest. Eventually, he hears the hooting of an owl and comes across Glastonbury Grove. Cooper steps into the circle and the red curtains appear. As Harry watches from a distance, Cooper steps though the curtains.

(Though it may just be coincidence, the red curtains always make me think about the opening of Dario Argento’s Deep Red.)

Cooper finds himself in the red curtained hallways. He walks until he reaches the room from his dreams. As the lights stobe, the Man From Another Place (Michael Anderson) dances while a lounge singer (Jimmy Scott) sings about Sycamore Trees. The Man From Another Place eventually hopes into a velvet chair. It’s deeply unsettling to watch because we know that, behind one of those curtains, BOB is lurking.

In the forest, Andy finds Harry. They sit outside of Glastonbury Grove and wait for Cooper to return.

Morning comes. We get a few final shots of the countryside around Twin Peaks. The mountains. The bridge where, 29 episodes ago, Ronette Pulaski was discovered battered and nearly catatonic. The forest. The countryside was beautiful when we first saw it but, after spending 31 hours in the world of Twin Peaks, it is now impossible to look at that wilderness without wondering what secrets are being concealed beneath the tranquil surface.

Harry and Andy are still sitting outside of Glastonbury and there is something truly touching about the sight of these two friends loyally waiting for their third friend to return. Andy volunteers to go to diner to get them breakfast. Harry says, “Yes.” Andy lists off all of the usual Twin Peaks food. Coffee. Pancakes. Desert. “Yeah,” Harry replies. When Andy finally asks if Harry wants pie, Harry falls silent. How can anyone eat pie with Cooper missing?

Meanwhile, at the bank — OH MY GOD! YOU MEAN WE’RE NOT GOING TO THE BLACK LODGE TO FIND OUT WHAT’S GOING ON WITH COOPER YET!? — an old lady sleeps at the new accounts desk. (It’s a very Lynchian image, to be honest.)

Audrey Horne (Sherilyn Fenn) comes in and says hello the elderly bank president, Mr. Mibbler (Ed Wright). Mibbler is really happy to see Audrey, even after she explains that she is going to be chaining herself to the vault as a part of her environmental protest. For whatever reason, almost all of David Lynch’s film features at least one elderly character who moves slowly and is utterly clueless about the world around them. Mr. Mibbler is certainly a part of that tradition.

(Speaking for myself, I like the way that the scene in the bank is shot and acted but it still frustrates me that, during the 2nd season, Twin Peaks could never quite figure out what to do with Audrey. When Kyle MacLachlan vetoed any romance between Cooper and Audrey, it pretty much destroyed Audrey’s storyline. To make us believe that Cooper and Audrey could actually fall in love with other people, the writers kept Cooper and Audrey from interacting and, as a result, it often seemed that Audrey was trapped in another, rather less interesting show. While Cooper investigated the Black Lodge and Windom Earle, Audrey was stuck playing Civil War with her father and improbably falling in love with John Justice Wheeler. Even in the finale, Audrey mostly serves as a distraction from the show’s main storyline. The character deserved better.)

Andrew and Pete show up at the bank. Mibbler is shocked to see that Andrew is still alive but Andrew is more concerned with opening up that deposit box. It takes Mibbler a while to find the box but when he does, he promptly opens it. What’s inside the box? Well, there’s a note from Thomas that read, “Finally got you, Andrew. Love, Thomas.” And there’s a bomb, which promptly explodes.

Oh my God, is Audrey dead!? Well, the episode never reveals who died or survived in the bank. However, having looked through the recently published The Secret History of Twin Peaks, I know the answer and I will reveal it at the end of this review.

At the Double R, Major Briggs (Don S. Davis) and Betty (Charlotte Stewart) are sharing a booth and, as opposed to the way they were portrayed all through the first season, they appear to be very much (and very playfully) in love.

At the counter, Bobby (Dana Ashbrook) watches his parents making out and then turns to Shelly (Madchen Amick.) He asks her to marry him. Shelly mentions that she’s still married to Leo and then she and Bobby start going, “Arf! Arf! Arf!,” which is a strangely cheerful callback to the way that Bobby and Mike taunted James Hurley at the end of the pilot. Bobby says that Leo is up in the woods, having the time of his life. A jump cut quickly reminds us that Leo is actually up in the woods trying to keep a bunch of tarantulas from falling down on his head.

Suddenly, Dr. Jacoby (Russ Tamblyn) and Sarah Palmer (Grace Zabriskie) step into the diner. They walk right over to Maj. Briggs. Dr. Jacoby says that Sarah has a message for him, one that she felt was very important. Speaking in the distorted voice of Windom Earle, Sarah says, “I am in the Black Lodge with Dale Cooper. I’m waiting for you.”

And here is where the finale basically goes insane. Seen today, the final 20 minutes of this episode remain genuinely unsettling and often rather frightening. I can only imagine how audiences reacted in 1991. I did a little research (which is a fancy way of saying that I looked on Wikipedia) and, believe it or not, the top-rated television show in 1991 was 60 Minutes. Needless to say, the finale of Twin Peaks was about as far from 60 Minutes as you could get.

In the Black Lodge, Cooper still sits in the room with red curtains. The Man From Another Place tells him, “When you see me again, it won’t be me.” The Man From Another Place explains that the room with red curtain is a waiting room. (Purgatory, perhaps?)

“Some of your friends are here,” The Man From Another Place continues.

Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee), dressed in black, walks in and sits down beside The Man From Another Place. “Hello Agent Cooper,” she says, speaking backwards. “I’ll see you again in 25 years. Meanwhile.” Laura vanishes.

(The 25 years explains why, way back in the third episode, Cooper appeared to be a much older man in his dream. It’s also interesting to note that, later this month, the 3rd season of Twin Peaks will air roughly 25 years after the 2nd season ended.)

Suddenly, the room service waiter (Hank Worden) appears with a cup of coffee. “Hallelujah,” he says. “Hallelujah,” the Man from Another Place agrees.

The waiter places on a table next to Cooper. Suddenly, the waiter is gone and the Giant (Carel Struycken) stands in his place. The Giant sits down next to The Man From Another Place.

“One and the same,” he says.

(Even though I know what’s going to happen, watching this scene still makes me nervous. The Giant, the Waiter, and The Man From Another Place are the only friends that Cooper has in the Black Lodge. Once the Giant leaves, who will be the next to come out?)

The Giant vanishes. The Man From Another Place rubs his hands together and gets a sinister little smile on his face. As he has done so many times since the series began, Cooper attempts to drink his coffee but discovers that it is now frozen solid. Suddenly, it’s not frozen and it pours out of the cup. Then, just as suddenly, it’s thick and only slowly dribbles out when Cooper tips the cup.

“Wow, BOB, wow,” the Man From Another Place says. He looks directly at the camera and says, his voice now much more rougher, “Fire walk with me.”

It’s an incredibly unsettling moment in an already unsettling episode. By this point, we all know what “Fire walk with me” means.

There’s an explosion. A woman (Laura or Annie?) screams. The lights start to strobe. Cooper walks out of the room and finds himself, once again, in the hallway. Having heard the scream and knowing what BOB did to Ronette, Laura, Maddy, and countless others, it is a coincidence that the only decoration in the hallway is a reproduction of the Venus de Milo, a beautiful woman who does not have the arms necessary to protect herself? As well, it is surely not a coincidence that the Black Lodge could just as easily pass for an “exclusive” section of One-Eyed Jack’s.

Cooper steps through another set of curtains and finds himself in a second room, one that looks just like the first room except that it’s deserted.

Cooper returns to the first room where The Man From Another Place snaps, “Wrong way!”

Cooper goes back to the second room. At first, it appears to be deserted but suddenly The Man From Another Place appears, laughing maniacally. “Another friend!” he says and suddenly, Maddy Ferguson (Sheryl Lee), dressed in black much like Laura, steps into the room. “Watch out for my cousin,” she says and then vanishes.

Cooper returns to the first room, which is now deserted.

Suddenly, the Man From Another Place appears beside him.

“Doppleganger,” the Man says.

Laura, her eyes white, suddenly stands in front of Cooper. “Meanwhile,” she says.

Suddenly, Laura screams and the lights start to strobe again. Still screaming, Laura charges at Cooper. Cooper runs from the room and suddenly, finds himself in the Black Lodge’s foyer. He realizes that, like all of Windom Earle’s victims, he has been stabbed in the stomach. Cooper staggers back into the hallway and, following a trail of bloody footprints, he returns to the second room.

In the room, he sees himself lying on the floor next to Caroline Earle (Brenda E. Mathers). Like Cooper, Caroline has been stabbed. Suddenly, Caroline sits up and … IT’S ANNIE! Cooper calls out her name but suddenly, the bodies disappear and the strobe lights start again.

Calling Annie’s name, Cooper returns to the first room. Annie is waiting for him. “Dale,” she says, “I saw the face of the man who killed me. It was my husband.”

“Annie,” Dale says.

“Who is Annie?”

Suddenly, Annie is a white-eyed Caroline and then she transforms into the still shrieking Laura. Laura turns into Windom Earle. As Cooper and Windom stare at each other, Annie materializes and then vanishes again. Windom says that he will set Annie free but only if Cooper gives up his soul.

“I will,” Cooper says and, for the first time, Cooper’s voice is now as distorted as all the other inhabitants of the Black Lodge.

Windom stabs Cooper in the stomach and suddenly, there’s another explosion. The strobe lights start again and Windom is screaming for help. Cooper, no longer wounded, sees that BOB (Frank Silva) has grabbed Windom. Windom screams and BOB snaps, “BE QUIET!”

(As scary as BOB is, it’s undeniably satisfying to see Windom Earle finally not in control.)

BOB tells Cooper to go. Windom, BOB explains, is wrong. “He can’t ask for your soul. I will take his!”

Windom screams as BOB literally rips his soul out of his head. Finally, Windom falls silent. As BOB continues to laugh, Cooper runs from the room. Suddenly, someone else comes running through the room and — OH NO! IT’S A DOPPELGANGER COOPER AND WOW, IS HE ACTING WEIRD!

Cooper walks through the hallway when suddenly, Leland Palmer (Ray Wise) steps out from behind a curtain. His hair is brown again but his eyes are now white. Leland smiles and says, “I did not kill anybody.”

Doppelganger Cooper appears and chases after the real Cooper. They run through the Black Lodge until Doppelganger Cooper manages to grab the real Cooper.

BOB appears and stares straight at the camera. AGCK!

Suddenly, at Glastonbury Grove, the curtains appear. Night has fallen again but Harry is still loyally sitting in the forest, waiting for Cooper’s return. When he sees the curtains, Harry runs into the circle of trees and finds the bodies of both Cooper and Annie.

Cut to the Great Northern. Cooper wakes up in bed, with Doc Hayward and Harry sitting beside him. Speaking in an oddly mechanical tone of voice, Cooper first says that he wasn’t sleeping and then asks, “How’s Annie?” Harry says that Annie is at the hospital and she’ll be okay.

“I need to brush my teeth,” Cooper says.

In the bathroom, Cooper squeezes an entire tube of toothpaste into the sink. He then rams his head into the mirror and, as the reflection of BOB stares back at him, he starts to laugh. “How’s Annie?” he mocking repeats. “How’s Annie?”

AGCK!

And, with that deeply unsettling turn of events, Twin Peaks came to a temporary end. This brilliantly directed episode ended with three cliffhangers. What happened to Ben? Who died at the bank? What happened to Dale Cooper?

I promised you answers to some of those question so, according to The Secret History of Twin Peaks, here they are:

Ben survived his injury.

At the bank, the bomb killed Mr. Dibbler, Andrew, and Pete. (Perhaps not coincidentally, both Dan O’Herlihy and Jack Nance died long before Showtime announced that it was reviving the show.) Audrey survived, largely because Pete shielded her with his body. Shaken by the violent death of both her brother and her husband, Catherine returned to Ben everything that he had signed over to her. Catherine became a recluse.

As for what happened to Dale — well, that’s question that we will hopefully get an answer to when Twin Peaks returns to Showtime on May 21st!

Well, that concludes our Twin Peaks recaps! Thank you everyone for reading and thank you, Jeff and Leonard, for going on this adventure with me!

Our latest episode begins with a closeup of Rusty Tomasky’s (Ted Raimi) face as the members of the Twin Peaks police force struggle to get the giant paper mache chess piece out of the gazebo. While this goes on, one of Rusty’s friends talks to Andy (Harry Goaz), Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan) and Harry (Michael Ontkean). Rusty was in a band and was supposed to play a gig at Snake River. On the way there, a tire went out on the van and a man emerged from the woods, wanting to know if Rusty wanted some “brew.” Rusty’s friend starts to cry, which makes Andy cry.

Cooper says that Windom has taken another pawn but he did not tell them his next move. “Windom Earle is playing off the board.”

The next morning, at the sheriff’s station, Lucy (Kimmy Robertson) asks Andy what he knows about saving the planet. Andy says that styrofoam never dies and people need to stop tossing their beer cans into Pearl Lake. Lucy says that tomorrow will be D-Day, “Dad day.” She will be choosing her baby’s father, either Andy Brennan or Dick Tremayne. She will also be entering the Miss Twin Peaks contest because she and the baby could use the money.

At the Great Northern, Doctor Hayward (Warren Frost) is giving Ben (Richard Beymer) a physical examination. Hayward tells Ben that he believes that Ben is trying to do the right thing but that he needs to stay away from Eileen. Ben says he has no choice. He has to do what his heart commands him to do. Wheeler (Billy Zane) steps into the office. He says that he has been looking for Audrey. Ben says that Audrey should be back any minute but Wheeler does not have a minute. His business partner has been murdered in Brazil.

In the attic of the Hayward house, Donna (Lara Flynn Boyle) looks over her birth certificate and sees that the identity of her father has been left blank. She finds a scrapbook, full of pictures of her parents with Ben.

Audrey (Sherilyn Fenn) returns to the Great Northern, where Deputy Hawk (Michael Horse) is waiting for her. Hawks tells he that Cooper needs to see her at the station, immediately.

In his office, Ben is still talking to Wheeler. Ben is more concerned about Stop Ghostwood than Wheeler’s dead business partner. Wheeler says that he has no choice but to go. Not realizing that Audrey’s back, Wheeler gives Ben a note and asks him to deliver it to her. Wheeler leaves the office.

At the sheriff’s station, Major Briggs (Don S. Davis) has obtained all of the Project Blue Book files dealing with Windom Earle. Briggs plays a video tape of Earle ranting about the Black Lodge. Cooper says that Earle did not come to Twin Peaks to get revenge on him. Instead, he came to Twin Peaks to find the Black Lodge. Now, they just have to figure out how the Black Lodge is connected to the drawing found in the cave.

Little do they know that, through the microphone hidden in the bonsai tree, Windom Earle (Kenneth Welsh) is listening to their conversation. Earle tells Leo (Eric Da Re) that the time has come to invite Major Briggs to a Project Blue Book reunion.

At the diner, an old woman who we have never been seen before is eating cheery pie when her hand starts to shake so uncontrollably that she has to grab it with her other hand to stop it.

In a booth, Shelly (Madchen Amick) reads her Miss Twin Peaks speech on how to protect the environment to Bobby (Dana Ashbrook). Bobby says that he has been thinking about his relationship with Shelly. Bobby says that he knows he has not been a great boyfriend but, when he saw Shelly kissing Gordon Cole, something in his brain snapped and he realized how much he loved Shelly. They share a passionate kiss that is interrupted by a phone call from Cooper.

At the Roadhouse, preparations are being made for the Miss Twin Peaks Contest. Mayor Milford (John Boylan) tells Lana (Robyn Lively) that the other two judges are going to be Norma Jennings and Richard Tremayne. The Mayor says that all they have to do to win is get Lana alone in a room with Richard. He tells her to wear “a dress slit all the way to Seattle.” The Mayor then starts to cry, wishing that they could just elope. Lana says that she will only marry him if she wins Miss Twin Peaks.

At the station, Cooper tells Audrey, Shelly, and Donna that all three of them are in danger. He orders them to check in with the sheriff at least twice a day and to never go anywhere alone.

At the cabin, Windom is talking about blood-drinking priests while Leo cleans up. Leo sees a picture of Shelly’s face glued to a playing card. Windom says that if Shelly wins Miss Twin Peaks, she will die. He says that Leo can help if he wants. “No!” Leo says before trying to attack Windom with the zapper, which does not work because, even though Leo has managed to grabbed the zapper, he is still the one wearing the electric collar. Leo ends up zapping himself.

Audrey returns to the Great Northern, walking through the lobby and barely missing Wheeler, who is checking out. Audrey goes to Ben’s office, when Ben welcomes her back and then tells her that the Stop Ghostwood Campaign needs a spokesperson. Ben wants her to enter Miss Twin Peaks. Audrey wants to know where Wheeler is. Ben finally tells her that Wheeler had to leave for the Brazilian rain forest and tries to give the letter to Audrey. Audrey leaves, hoping to catch Wheeler at the airport.

At the sheriff’s station, Cooper, Harry, and Andy are examining the cave drawing. Cooper says that the symbols suggest a time but a time for what? Cooper admits that he is having a hard time focusing because he can not stop thinking about Annie. Suddenly, Cooper’s hand starts to shake until he grabs it with his other hand.

Major Briggs is walking through the woods when he is approached by Windom Earle and Leo, who are wearing a horse costume. “Hello, Wilbur!” Earle says before shooting the Major with a tranquilizer dart.

At the airport, Wheeler is getting in his private plane. He stops to take one final look for Audrey.

At the diner, Cooper orders a slice of cheery pie and uses a quote from St. Augustine to encourage Annie (Heather Graham) to enter the Miss Twin Peaks contest. Cooper confesses that he spends most of his time thinking about Annie. Annie says she spends all of her time thinking about Cooper. Cooper asks Annie to go dancing with him and leans in to kiss her. Dishes all of the counter and syrup ominously drips on the floor.

At the airport, Pete (Jack Nance) drives Audrey across the airstrip, letting her off in front of Wheeler’s plane. Audrey runs in front of the taxiing airplane, yelling for Wheeler to stop. Luckily, Wheeler does stop before running her over.

“I’m a virgin!” Audrey says, “I want you to make love to me.”

“Here and now?” Wheeler asks.

“It’s your jet.”

Realizing that Audrey has a point, Wheeler leads her into his plane, while Pete watches from his truck. Pete has tears in his eyes. Suddenly, his hand starts to shake uncontrollably.

At the cabin, Earle interrogates the bound Briggs, shooting arrows at him whenever Briggs says that he is not at liberty to divulge any information. Earle gets annoyed and gives the major a shot of truth serum. Earle asks Briggs what his greatest fear is.

“The possibility that love is not enough,” Briggs says.

(I would have said salmonella but that’s just me.)

Under the influence of the serum, Briggs says that the signs in the cave mean that “there is a time, if Jupiter and Saturn meet, they will receive you.”

At the Roadhouse, Annie and Cooper are dancing. Looking at the decorations for the Miss Twin Peaks pageant, Annie tells Cooper that she has decided to enter. Annie says that being Miss Twin Peaks would be like being in a fairy tale. “And you’re the queen,” Cooper says.

Suddenly, time freezes for everyone but Cooper. The lights go down. The Giant (Carel Struycken) appears on the stage, shaking his head “NO.” Cooper looks confused though it should be obvious to him that the Giant is saying, “No, do not enter the contest!”

At the airport, Wheeler’s plane finally takes off. Pete gets out of his truck and is approached by a newly mature Audrey who says that she finally met the man of his dreams and now he is on his way to Brazil. Audrey cries that Wheeler offered to take her fishing but he never did. Pete says he has some tackle in the truck. Pete tells her that the best cure for a broken heart is trout’s leap at midnight.

At the cabin, Leo is shaking and the Major is screaming. Earle is singing about mummy wheat. Earle has figured out that the drawing is actually a map to the Black Lodge.

At the dance, the Giant finally disappears. As Cooper kisses Annie. Mayor Milford tries to get a microphone to work. “Something’s not right,” he says, “there’s something wrong here.”

In the woods, Killer BOB (Frank Silva) emerges from a portal while the red curtains are reflected in a nearby puddle.

With only two episodes left, this was a pretty good episode. All of the disparate plotlines of the latter half of the second season are finally coming together and the appearance of both the Giant and BOB at the end promises that the finale will be a return to the Twin Peaks of old.

Leonard is doing tomorrow’s episode and then Lisa is doing the finale so this is my last recap. I have really enjoyed rewatching Twin Peaks and sharing my thoughts about the show with all of you. Thank you for reading!

I’d like to commemorate suddenly finding my TV on a Spanish-language station a few days ago that I didn’t know existed where a guy was cutting an apple in his mouth using a chainsaw. That’s a thing that happened when I was simply trying to switch between movies on my DVR.

Ah, good old Mexican Radio by Wall of Voodoo. This is right up there with songs like Safety Dance and Come On Eileen as the stereotypical 80s one-hit wonder. It’s fun, catchy, and a genuinely good song. There’s one problem though. Just like many SNL sketches, I don’t see how this was supposed to translate into a career. Of course I thought of that, and then I had to look into what happened to them.

After this song, they basically broke up the band. I say basically because some of the members continued under that name even though lead singer Stan Ridgway had left the band and went solo. They would even go on to do at least one other music video for a song called Far Side of Crazy. It’s pretty good. I’ll have to do that one someday. I also found out that Westerns were a theme with them beyond just this one song and the video for it that they shot in Tijuana. You can find them doing a cover of Ring of Fire. However, at the end of the day, it’s not really something I see as sustainable. It’s more of a novelty than anything else. Ridgway on the other hand, is sustainable. I hope the video is still up. Here is Ridgway performing his song Camouflage in 2015.

This stuff works for a solo artist. I get why it flopped for an entire group. I could probably go into more detail about what happened to the group, but I don’t need to do that because there is an interview with Ridgway over on Songfacts where he explains it.

The music video is timeless. Why wouldn’t it be? It’s another one made by Francis Delia. I have done two other music videos of his so far. He has brought us a dead shark in Shooting Shark, a cooked pig for Somebody’s Watching Me, and now an iguana being barbecued. I can’t wait to see more of his music videos to see if this is a recurring thing like rocking chairs are in Anton Corbijn videos.